BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
According to Cameron Carpenter, the organ is an “instrument of stereotype, eccentricity, and obscurity”. The American composer and musician leaves all expectations of the instrument in the dust as he tours the world with his own creation – the International Touring Organ. Carpenter explains the “brilliant and revolutionary vehicle” he has made ahead of his upcoming Aussie gigs (check out dates in your city here).
Why did you feel the need to make your own instrument? Regular organs aren’t good enough?
This organ is a cultural gateway for listeners of every age and nationality into a new experience of listening. It allows me to play at my best, on an organ I have known intimately for years, every time I play for an audience – exactly as a cellist, violinist or singer would. This is something the pipe organ, as a unique site-specific instrument, can never provide.
I’m only interested in the organ as a machine. The better and more accurate the machine, the better the product I can make with it.
What does this “machine” allow you to do that other organs don’t?
It allows me to play a much greater diversity of musical material than any pipe organ. It allows me to operate independently of the organ community. Most importantly, it allows me to take an ever-greater role in the ongoing development of the identity of young organists, the only future the organ itself has.
Important for me as a secular artist, it gives me an instrument truly capable of film scoring, jazz, and new music, as well as the complete organ repertoire and my own improvisations and compositions.
People have enough trouble travelling with cellos – doesn’t this make touring awfully complicated?
The relativity of the term ‘complicated’ takes on a new dimension when you play the organ.
How do you choose your diverse repertoire, with works from Bach to your originals?
I play only music that I love, and I make no specific effort to appeal to anyone’s tastes other than my own. In fact, the live experience I’m most interested in creating is a very challenging one, in which there should be a range of experiences that are not all universally beautiful, charming or pleasant – vulgarity, violence, and the sinister are just as worthy.
I’m not that interested in any organ at all, but rather in the emotions we can unlock with it, just as the ability to channel those emotions is the only verifiable proving ground of any organ’s worth. All the music I play, whether Shostakovich or silliness, is included only because I find something in it worth sharing.
Who are your idols and inspirations?
I don’t do idols. I also don’t believe in inspiration as it’s usually meant. You don’t get it, you have it. If you don’t already have it in you in greater quantities than you’ll ever find elsewhere, it would be better to avoid the arts as a career.
Image supplied, source CAMI and credit Thomas Grube.
